Château de Marly
Encyclopedia
Marly-le-Roi
Marly-le-Roi is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre....
, the commune that existed at the edge of the royal park. The town that originally grew up to service the château
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
is now a dormitory community for Paris.
At the Château of Marly, Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
escaped from the formal rigors he was constructing at Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
. Small rooms meant fewer company, and simplified protocol
Protocol (diplomacy)
In international politics, protocol is the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state.A protocol is a rule which guides how an activity should be performed, especially in the field of diplomacy. In diplomatic services and governmental fields of endeavor protocols are often unwritten guidelines...
; courtiers, who fought among themselves for invitations to Marly, were housed in a revolutionary design of twelve pavilion
Pavilion (structure)
In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...
s built in matching pairs flanking the central sheets of water, which were fed one from the other by prim formalized cascades (illustration, right).
The château is no more, nor the hydraulic "machine"
Machine de Marly
The Machine de Marly, also widely known as La Machine de Marly and The Machine of Marly, was a French engineering marvel completed in 1684. King Louis XIV needed a large water supply for his fountains at Versailles...
that pumped water for Versailles. Only the foundation of Jules Hardouin-Mansart's small château, the pavillon du Roi remains at the top of the slope in Marly park.
History
The works at Marly were begun in the spring of 1679, on 22 May, before Louis had moved his court permanently to Versailles. The king was looking for a retreat on well-wooded royal lands between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-LayeChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
that were well-watered and provided a grand view. Marly was chosen. Robert Berger has demonstrated that the design of Marly was a full collaboration between Jules Hardouin-Mansart and the premier peintre Charles Le Brun
Charles Le Brun
Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...
, who were concurrently working on the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. Mansart's elevations for the pavilions were to be frescoed to designs adapted from a suite that Le Brun had recently drawn and the frescoed exteriors of the otherwise somewhat severe buildings created a richly Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
ensemble of feigned sculptures against draperies and hangings, with vases on feigned sculptural therms against the piers
Pier (architecture)
In architecture, a pier is an upright support for a superstructure, such as an arch or bridge. Sections of wall between openings function as piers. The simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, although other shapes are also common, such as the richly articulated piers of Donato...
— all in the somewhat eclectic Olympian symbolism that Le Brun and the King favoured everywhere at Versailles: the decor of the pavillon du Roi featured Apollo, the Sun King's iconographic persona, and Thetis. Other pavilions were dedicated to other Olympians, but also to Hercules, and to Victory, Fame and Abundance. Construction was completed by 1684, though the overcharged painted programmes were simplified and restrained in the execution.
The Sun King attended the opening of the completed hydraulic works in June 1684 http://world.std.com/~hmfh/machine1.htm and by 1686 development was sufficiently advanced for the King to stay there for the first time, with a picked entourage. The theme of Marly was that it was a simple hunting lodge, just enough to accommodate the Royal Hunt. In 1688 the Grand Abreuvoir à chevaux was installed on the terrace, a mere "horse trough." Throughout the rest of his life, Louis continued to embellish the wooded park, with wide straight rides, in which ladies or the infirm might follow the hunt, at some distance, in a carriage, and with more profligate waterworks than waterless Versailles—watered from Marly in fact—could provide: the Rivière or Grande Cascade dates to 1697–1698.
The famous description of Marly in the memoirs of Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy commonly known as Saint-Simon was a French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born in Paris...
were written in retrospect and, for the initiation of Marly, at second hand; when Saint-Simon wrote, in 1715, Marly's heyday was ending, with the death of Louis XIV that year. Louis' heirs found the north-facing slope at Marly damp and dreary, and rarely visited. The "river" was filled in and grassed in 1728. During the Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
the marble horses by Guillaume Coustou the Elder
Guillaume Coustou the Elder
Guillaume Coustou the Elder was a French sculptor and academician. Coustou was the younger brother of French sculptor Nicolas Coustou and the pupil of his mother's brother, Antoine Coysevox...
, the Chevaux de Marly, were transported to Paris (1794), to flank the opening of the Champs-Élysées
Champs-Élysées
The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strip of real estate in the world. The name is...
in the soon-to-be-renamed Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde
The Place de la Concorde in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.- History :...
. (They are now in the Musée du Louvre, along with many other Marly sculptures.)
In 1799/1800, Marly was sold to an industrialist, M. Sagniel, who installed machinery to spin cotton thread. When the factory failed in 1806, the château was demolished and its building materials sold, even the lead of its roof. Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
bought back the estate the following year; the empty gardens and the surrounding woodland park still belong to the State.
Remains
At the end of the 19th century several connoisseurs purchased leases on the individual garçonnières, cleaned up the overgrowth, recovered some bruised and broken statuary and recreated small gardens among the ruins: Alexandre Dumas, filsAlexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils was a French author and dramatist. He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright.-Biography:...
and the playwright and collector of 18th-century furnishings Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
.
The Cour Marly of the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
museum was inaugurated in 1993. It contains mostly works of art from Marly, displayed on three levels.
The Marly machine
Bougival
Bougival is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the center....
(where his inventor Rennequin Sualem
Rennequin Sualem
Rennequin Sualem was a Walloon carpenter and engineer Rennequin Sualem was a Walloon carpenter and engineer Rennequin Sualem was a Walloon carpenter and engineer (Jemeppe-sur-Meuse (Walloon Country) 1645 - Bougival (France 1708 ).In 1667-1668 Lieutenant-Governor of the castle of Huy ordered the...
died in 1708), driven by the current of the Seine moving fourteen vast paddlewheels, was a miracle of modern hydraulic engineering
Hydraulic engineering
This article is about civil engineering. For the mechanical engineering discipline see Hydraulic machineryHydraulic engineering as a sub-discipline of civil engineering is concerned with the flow and conveyance of fluids, principally water and sewage. One feature of these systems is the extensive...
, perhaps the largest integrated machine of the 17th century. It pumped water to a head of 100 meters into reservoirs at Louveciennes
Louveciennes
Louveciennes is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi.-Sights:...
(where Madame du Barry
Madame du Barry
Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry was the last Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.-Early life:...
had her chateau
Château de Louveciennes
The Château de Louveciennes in Louveciennes, in the Yvelines department of France, is composed of the château itself, constructed at the end of the 17th century. It was then expanded and redecorated by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Madame du Barry in the 18th century, and the music pavilion was...
in the 1760s). The water then flowed either to fill the cascade at Marly or, passing through an elaborate underground network of reservoirs and aqueducts
Aqueduc de Louveciennes
Laqueduc de Louveciennes , sometimes called aqueduc de Marly is an aqueduct built in under the reign of Louis XIV, located in Louveciennes . Now out of service, the aqueduct is listed as Monument historique since 1953...
, to drive the fountains at Versailles. Only one could be operated with sufficient head, invariably the one where the king was.
In the nineteenth century, various other pumps replaced the originals, and the last was taken out of service in 1967.
External links
- Marly: state property
- "La machine de Marly" (in English)
- "Marly-le-Roi and Baroque garden design in France"
- The Ways of Men: producer Eliot Gregory visits Sardou at Marly
- "The castle of Marly during the reign of the Sun King Louis XIV " (in French)